


From the Abyss

by deadthing



Category: Homestuck
Genre: F/F
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-07-20
Updated: 2015-07-20
Packaged: 2018-04-10 08:49:41
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,405
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4385528
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/deadthing/pseuds/deadthing
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>'Stars skirted the far reaches of her field of vision but she could not turn her head to pull them into focus. Instead, she let the weight of the ocean above her pull her limply down.'</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Seer: Remember

**Author's Note:**

> Who knows how long I'll be able to keep this up. I have a poor track record with finishing things. I have about three chapters written, and if I don't start hearing feedback I'm going to lose interest so here goes.

Another disturbing dream dissipated, dispelling Rose from a grotesque kaleidoscope of morbid imagery and returning her to the dubious comfort afforded by a few scant pumps of sopor slime and the radiescent hand gripping her upper thigh. In the few moments before she could make logical sense of the intermingling smells of herbes de Provence and cold sweat, she could almost hear her mother closing the door behind her, and the clacking of heels on marble steps. In her dream, a girl had washed up on the shore of Lake Champlain; a pallid, skinny, dripping thing with platinum blonde curls plastered to her cheeks. She coughed and heaved up a mess of black goo, looked up at Rose with blank, lolling eyes, and then collapsed back into the mud. The corpse could have been Rose's own emaciated form, but the hair was a bit longer; wildly tangled and unkempt.

Her nightmares took place on route 87 and the back roads of Essex County, where the dark forms of trees atop cutout cliffs cast long shadows over miles of empty throughway. They took place in Ausable Chasm with the looming observatory towering starkly against the trees, and the sound of the falls that textured Rose's every memory of the place. But most often they took place on the banks of rivers and ponds and the shores of lakes and the sea, and sometimes, from the inconceivable abyss, a form would emerge. Either it was a writhing mass of eldritch horror beckoning Rose with a putrid brand of nostalgia, or it was the girl. Rose was always far more disquieted by the girl.

Rose's stirring woke Kanaya, who pushed back a matted lock of Rose's hair and nestled into the crook of her neck. In turn, Rose placed her hands on Kanaya's back and drew the troll against her. She pushed herself into Kanaya's lap and allowed herself to be relieved of the anxiety of the dream. She lost herself in Kanaya the way she always did, and when she stopped trembling, her fear had all but subsided. That was the routine. Since turning away from alcohol, Rose sought complacency in sex. 

Curled into Kanaya with long glowing fingers entangled in her cropped hair, Rose began to hum. The reverberations of her eldritch hymn against Kanaya's chest punctuated the near silence of the block; the whir of an enclosed fan and the electric buzz of lab machinery offered the only auditory context. It was year two on the meteor, and Rose was still captivated and plagued by memories of her past. She refused to relinquish her recollections of grimdarkness; the sensations of being one with the void and eternity. Being one with Kanaya in some way often helped to resolve that. But largely, and apart from her relationship with the horrorterrors of the furthest ring, Rose was haunted by mirages, dreams, and thoughts of her mother: more specifically, by the acute, dire premonition that the only version of her mother she ever had a chance of reunion with was already dead and gone. The Seer of Light had no reason not to trust her intuition, but only to seek solace in the only things she had left; the drowning madness of the furthest ring, and her darling Kanaya.

"Rose," came Kanaya's gentle, annunciating whisper. "I think it might be wholly beneficial to at this point gather yourself and complete your evening ablutions in preparation for the night. The least you can do is drag yourself down to breakfast, and before you raise any protest, I'll have you be aware that I've noticed you skipping meals." Rose clung more tightly to the luminescent woman. Kanaya extended one hand to grip the lip of the recuperacoon and, holding Rose at the small of her back, hoisted them both out. Rose, weak still from sleep, stumbled after the effortlessly graceful Kanaya down the dim, quiet corridor and towards the communal trap. 

One of the most invaluable alchemized items was the grand porcelain tub set rather peculiarly amidst an eclectic hodge podge of a dozen teenagers' sundry bathroom necessities. From hairdryers and a bidet, to more alien contraptions, to Kanaya's own caddy of mostly hand-crafted bath products, the room possessed the ambiance of a place of dysfunctional harmony; a certain element of organized chaos. Kanaya ran the ornate silver tap, and the tub filled with warm water. At home, Rose might have added a bushel of lilac to her bath for the scent, but notwithstanding the dilemma of being unable to harvest flowers on the meteor, Rose did not wish to stew, quite literally, in memories of New York. She was much more at peace pressed into Kanaya, whose sweet vanilla shampoo had become another fixture in their shared routine. Kanaya's bathing Rose was an oddly calming reminder of just how greatly Rose depended on Kanaya's care for peace and sanctuary. On earth, Rose had never enjoyed being reliant on anyone but herself; her present abandonment of self-sufficiency helped her escape the past.

Clean and wrapped in a warm towel, Rose took her coffee in the corridor adjacent to the eating nook. From her vantage point just outside, Rose watched Kanaya fry eggs in the kitchen. The vent above stirred the still, metallic air, and the chugging and churning of the boiler could be heard at any of the vent's gated openings. A plate of eggs in hand, Kanaya joined Rose and together they made their way to the repurposed computer lab. Rose curled her bare toes into plush Persian carpet and took a seat beside Kanaya on the velvet upholstered love seat at the coffee table. 

Suddenly, that all-too-familiar exhilarated hysteria was returning to the seer. She closed her eyes and allowed herself to be overtaken. It was like she was falling backwards into cold water, and before the rush of seawater could fill the shells of her ears, she felt hands on her back pulling her out and an incongruous warmth where icy wind should have lashed at her bare back.

“Before you offer any riposte, let me just interject that you were definitely about to pass out that time and as long as your episodes of prescience continue to do harm to you, it is my duty to extricate you from your mind’s dark clutch.” In what once would have been a wildly uncharacteristic display of resignation to extrinsic forces, Rose assented and allowed herself to be comforted by Kanaya’s slender fingers between her legs.

Spent once more, Rose allowed herself to relax, and focused her every mental faculty on her breakfast. Kanaya ensured the plate was clear before taking it in her clean hand and returning to the kitchen. Rose perused her captchalogue with strict attention in search of her orange robes. In that interval, a loudly bickering Karkat and shortly trailing Dave entered the block. Aside from Rose and Kanaya, Dave and Karkat were the only inhabitants of the meteor that still made frequent use of the lab. Vriska was an absentee leader, often dragging Terezi on whatever exploits she departed on, and Gamzee was simultaneously as ubiquitous and enigmatic as the stale air that hung in the corridors.

Rose stood to take her leave and brood in silence when Dave pushed past her in a calculated movement to get her attention. She about-faced and while Karkat poured himself a mug of coffee, Dave leaned in and whispered in her ear.

"Hey, Kanaya's not the only one who cares about you. If you can take a rest from your woegothy moping for a couple minutes, maybe I can actually help you with whatever you're dealing with instead of just fucking it out of you. I mean like, not that she's not helping you at all but if you need . . . I dunno, brotherly support or something, I'm your conveniently tissue-equipped shoulder to cry on." He shrugged and turned around. "Yeah, Karkat, I was listening."

Dave, as endearing as he was, had gotten her all wrong. Kanaya had tried to talk and listen, but Rose had exhausted words before she had exhausted drink, and she'd come to the point where the wound didn't need draining anymore; it needed stitches. No amount of talk therapy could fix her damage. Perhaps if she just needed to sort out her feelings regarding her mother, her own flesh and blood might have been reasonable consultation. But there was a poltergeist haunting the antichambers of Rose's mind and it was creating too much racket to block out with sparrs of wit and banter.

She stood under the vent for several minutes on her way out. She let it blow sour-smelling air at her as she listened. She looked up between the grates and swore she could feel an invisible pair of eyes staring back. She heard the rush of bubbles and the motion of glinting particles in the corridor slowed to a suspended halt. She was underwater, gazing yet deeper into the abyssal beyond. Stars skirted the far reaches of her field of vision but she could not turn her head to pull them into focus. Instead, she let the weight of the ocean above her pull her limply down. From a trench that let out into infinity emerged a presence. The dim pokes of light in the black velvet expanse served only to add volume to the darkness; there was no light to illuminate the thing, but Rose could tell what it was. Had it been one of the noble circle, Rose would have surrendered instantly to its broodfester song and let herself be filled by the tendrils of its decadent darkness. But there was no irresistible magnetism here. Only cold terror as the sleeping creature rose from the depths of what might as well have been a freezing black hell. From the slight raise in temperature at her lips, Rose could tell the thing was mere inches from her face. And then at once, the stars burst into dust and the water was all swallowed away and Rose was staring up into the vent at a pair of magenta eyes. She blinked, stumbled backward, and they were gone.


	2. Chapter 2

It started during a bath. The picture window opening the stately porcelain tub out to Ausable Chasm was an ironic fixture in a bathroom, but one that had never phased Rose. The dense woods and remoteness of the house ensured unbroken privacy, and Rose liked to gaze out at the dark horizon and countless stars over the lake. At times she sat in the empty tub with her violin and played passionately to an invisible audience out the open window. At other times, it gave her peace to feel the cold night air as she bathed, so long as her mother was out late working. 

Rose was burning a plate of votives and lazily stirring a smudge stick into her bath. She was fairly certain she had been told not to place it in water or some spiritual entity would emerge in the tub with her; thus she sent the mystical stick the same way as Mother's expensive quinquina. Rose had always harbored an overpowering distaste for being told what she shouldn't do. 

On this chilly September night in particular, Mother was passed out drunk in bed and Rose had run of the kingdom. She'd brought a fondly familiar old text into the tub with her and had propped the grimoire up on the bathtub's lip to leaf through. She laid back against the cool polish finish of the tub and let the wind whistle into the high-ceilinged bathroom through the vast window ajar.

Rose may have nodded off during the course of her soak, and when she awoke, she discovered her fingers had begun to prune. Dipping her hand in to feel her certainly wrinkled toes, she withdrew her fingers sharply upon feeling something that most certainly was not her leg. She looked down at dark, murky water and black ink dripping from the withered pads of her fingers. Just below the surface of the reeking, salty water were dozens of tentacles, sprawling in all directions, entwining and swaying in a nonexistent current. She immediately pulled the stopper, and as the tub drained, the darkness condensed and the briny water gurgled away, leaving Rose's own pallid, wet legs glinting in the moonlight, and a clean tub refracting moonlight like enamel.

She would be sitting in class when at once, her innards would turn to writhing, pulsating muck. Her heartbeat would sound thick and wet and irregular in her ears and her throat would fill with saltwater. Sometimes she would dig in her backpack and her hand would come out corpse grey. In all instances, she excused herself to the bathroom, but she could never bring herself to vomit. The hallucinations -she was sure that was what they were- subsided before she could bend over the toilet seat.

At a certain point, Rose began to take comfort in her passengers. They whispered to her, and she somehow intuited that there were many of them. She heard their voices in her dreams, and instead of frightening her, they drew her in. They became a nigh-constant presence, even when they were silent. She would feel, from time to time, a clammy chill pass over her, and her riders would roil inside her, squelching into the meats of her eyes. She would feel no pain by them. She took morbid joy in housing them and caring for them with every morsel she ate. The elder gods were her company when she had no friends. They were her courage when she was scared. They were her fury and her passion, and she fed them with her soul.

At all times, Rose was hyper aware of many pairs of eyes trained on her through the substanceless boundaries of space and time. However, in an expressly Rose fashion, she never let it subdue her or hold her back. She was wild and reckless just to prove to the abominations that she would sacrifice her body but not her free will for them. She showed her voyeurs that her dignity was in her mind and not her body. She was tethered by tentacles, but she held the eyes of the old ones hostage. They watched her dance and curse and please herself. They heard her every despicable thought. They knew everything about her. She thought they were the only ones.


End file.
